A silent voice is not only a mid-tier movie; it's a dangerous one. Spoilers ahead, so if you haven't watched it yet, I would recommend doing so unless you happen to be sensitive to gross misinterpretations and misunderstandings of mental illness, in which case you should not watch this movie.
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As I just mentioned, A Silent Voice does not exactly do great with the portrayal of mental illness. in one of the most awful scenes I've ever watched in anime, Ishida's mother yells at him and victim-blames him and pretends to, herself, be the victim because Ishida was stressing her out due to his suicide attempt.
Not only is this absolutely insane response to a depressive episode portrayed as if it was a good thing that his mother did it, BUT IT ALSO SEEMS TO HELP HIM. As someone who has severe clinical depression for years and has coped with suicidal thoughts in the past, this is an incredibly inconsiderate and insensitive portrayal of mental illness. Blaming someone who has just attempted suicide for stressing you out will only make it worse for the person experiencing depression and is the worst possible response one could give in this scenario. But this is far from the only way in which the movie entirely misunderstands how mental illness works.
The second most apparent example of this movie's imperfect record of the fair portrayal of mental illness is how Ishida's social anxiety (and, for all we know, depression) suddenly disappears after he... makes friends? Mental illness doesn't just go away because of things like that; it's a long process of therapy and often requires taking medications to help with it.
On the subject of therapy, this is one of the most dangerous parts of the movie. It pushed the narrative that mental illness will just go away if good things happen to you, and as I just mentioned, never discusses therapy or any kind of professional help at all. If Ishida's mom had not just yelled at him and instead gotten him a therapist (or even if she had done both, that would have been at least a slight improvement), this problem could have easily been resolved. Yet, for whatever reason, it was not.
Another fundamental criticism I have of A Silent Voice is how of the characters themselves. The worst written character, in my opinion, is by far Nishimiya. She, throughout the movie, is portrayed as having no personality outside of always being nice to everyone and being super submissive and forgiving, as well as seemingly not being very intelligent, given that her classmates in elementary school clearly were not interested in being friends with her. To me, Nishimiya just seems like a sort of plot device, something that enables Ishida to both experience his fall from grace after bullying her and his redemption, as he befriends her.
As far as I can tell, this is just lazy writing. The creator wanted to create a story about someone who is a bully, and due to him bullying others, he is bullied himself, and then has a redemption arc and becomes a good person again. In and of itself, this storyline is fine, but it was realized in the worst way possible. Nishimiya makes it work but trying to make her a main character when her only personality traits are being friendly and being deaf is not the best way to go about it.
It's the same thing, as a matter of fact, with Ishida and Ueno. At the beginning of the movie, they don't really have personalities; they're just assholes for no apparent reason who delight in bullying a poor deaf girl. Later on, of course, Ishida's personality is more developed, and so is Ueno's to some extent, but not nearly enough as it should have been. For the most part, the characters' actions go unexplained and are just used to further the plot.
Ueno, in particular, is a highly flawed character in this A Silent Voice. Throughout the movie, she is portrayed as an essentially evil character with no redeeming qualities, as is symbolized by her actions throughout the story. In the beginning, she bullies Nishimiya for a pretty poor reason and then continues to hate her and evoke said hatred through physical violence directed at her, as well as verbal abuse. In a movie supposedly about redemption, this is a bizarre way to present such an important character.
The way I see it, A Silent Voice is a story about Ishida's fall from and return to grace, with some other unimportant characters to help him along the way. And I think it could've been an excellent movie if those other characters were developed more and given more depth and importance to the central theme and plot, and, as I mentioned before, mental illness was handled more realistically and sensitively.